Scream of Joy: Plants vs Zombies Boardgame

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I’m very, very disappointed in all of you. This news broke yesterday and NOBODY TOLD ME.

Spotted at Toyfair by Kotaku was… was… I can barely say it. It’s just too beautiful to be true. Was…

Was a Plants vs Zombies boardgame. At last, the divided PC/boardgames mind of RPS is united.
It’s only at prototype stage for now, which means we have to wait until whatever on Earth a ‘Fall’ is this year. I’m going to predict we’ll see it in Autumn.

Two-to-four players, with multiple boards, dozens of cards and a general ongoing tussle between the titular chlorophyll- and rot-based factions. I.e. it’s making the game truly competitive, and hopefully co-operate too.

It’s from a firm called Screenlife, and there isn’t too much info available as yet. You can at least find a little more detail, including the rough structure of how it plays, here.Mashable, meanwhile, reckons it’ll be $20.

Disappointingly, it won’t come with any miniatures. Oh well. I remain 100% grateful.

Perhaps this a herald of more videogame-based boardgames. This is, of course, your opportunity to present your pitches below.

So, thoroughly off-topic, but where do people go for their non-PC gaming news? I used to go to Kotaku (yes yes evil me), but the new site design is so hideous that I can’t stand going there anymore. Points for sites with standard newsroll format like RPS and the old Kotaku, no crazy Web 2.0 gee-gaws. Also points for sites that aren’t aggressively anti-PC (what little I’ve seen of Destructiod means I’m staying far far away).
Anyway, on topic: awesome! PopCap news is always welcome.

Thanks Primar. I’ve also found out that ca.kotaku.com works to — it’s the Canadian site, which I would assume would be faster for an American like me than the UK one (although for all I know all of their servers are in the same place). I’ll check out Joystiq too, although I don’t like their comment system from first impressions. Thanks again.

Back to topic: every once in awhile my friends get together and play board games. It would be amusing to pull this one out.

You know, I’m more interested in video games taking inspiration from board games, in particular euros, which tend to be more focussed on developing a thriving economy that produces victory points rather than straight up domination of enemies. I mainly mention it because my girlfriend wants to join me in my love of gaming, but dislikes direct conflict, so finding games to play with her is difficult to say the least.

How about some cooperative action (also involving conflict, but against an “NPC”):

Pandemic, Arkham Horror, Space Alert.

Problem with most competitive games that don’t have direct conflict is that they also often lack a decent ammount of player interaction, thus making them more or less “Single-Player” affairs, where you sit next to each other but essentially play for yourself.

You were talking about videogames of course… a well. Do you have a PS3? Try PixelJunk Shooter or PixelJunk Eden, they’re great and involve relatively little direct conflict.
You could also try the Coop-Mode added in the Anno 1404 (“Dawn of Discovery” in NA) Addon (“Venice”). I don’t know if its good, but playing this game co-operatively sure sounds awesome, especially in the way they (apparently) implemented it.
Since the Anno series requires a lot of multi-tasking its very nice to be able delegate some of the tasks.

They’d have to make a Feature Film “inspired by” the board game first. Then a terrible licensed game-of-the-film. No doubt a dreadful console port, the PC version of Plants vs. Zombies: The Videogame would define “Worst. Game. Ever” for a generation.

Could work! You can create portals to and from any square in your line of sight, but opponents can slide walls, manipulate turrets and place their own portals to stop you. I’m thinking it’d be a bit like sci-fi Othello in a lot of ways. A lot of very important ways.

Massive board that takes up most of the room, play with the old dinky toys in the box up in the loft, push your car around the board wherever you like, roll a die once every minute to determine if you
a) smash in to an invisible car,
b) smash in to an invisible bump in the road
c) smash in to an invisible wall while a new chunk of board loads “seamlessly”
d) smash in to a car that has just stopped dead in front of you for no readily apparent reason
e) stop to pick up a “supermodel” who is none the less standing at the side of the road, hitch hiking.
f) continue your journey unimpeded.

Warhammer:Dawn of War – The board game!
That would be awesome. It will be turn based and stuff! And you have to buy overpriced miniatures and paint them! I’m going to be so rich…
Ok just joking. I want a Bulletstorm board game.
Oh wait, now I’ve got a great idea!EA – The Board of directors game. Your goal is to buy as many studios as possible and once done, you have to fire as many people as possible. You get bonus points if you’re firing one of your studios just after they finished a game. Also a good way to rank up points is to releas shitty sequels and keep your long dead series alive while letting other, far more popular and original but less money-printing studios/series go bust.
The game is mainly aimed for two players: One playing as EA Inc. while other one plays as Activision/Blizzard. However, you can play with up to for players and adding Ubisoft and Valve.
You recieve different starting boni according to which company you’re playing. As Act/Bliz you’ve got the “Make your opponent go WoW”-card. It basicly gives you a basic income of a gazillion dollars. On the downside, your players buy less other games.
As EA you’ve got “Alloo, ragen plaga! Dag dag”-card. You can play it once to recieve a bazillion dollars, however you’re then able to play the Addon-card as many times as you want and still getting money. On the downside, there’s no point in playing the DLC-card on this one.
Of course, the game features a lot more. For example: Raging fans, Arguments with your developers, Copyprotection, Lawsuits, Sequeal canceling, Lawsuits with your developers, DLC-ripoffs, Hiring developers of the other players, Lazy support, Firing more developers after hiring them, Huge advertising campaigns, Lawsuits with your fans…and much more!